ide showed where the
little boy was stretched. Still nearer to us was the dead cab-horse,
kneeling between the shafts. The old driver was hanging over the
splash-board like some grotesque scarecrow, his arms dangling absurdly in
front of him. Through the window we could dimly discern that a young man
was seated inside. The door was swinging open and his hand was grasping
the handle, as if he had attempted to leap forth at the last instant. In
the middle distance lay the golf links, dotted as they had been in the
morning with the dark figures of the golfers, lying motionless upon the
grass of the course or among the heather which skirted it. On one
particular green there were eight bodies stretched where a foursome with
its caddies had held to their game to the last. No bird flew in the blue
vault of heaven, no man or beast moved upon the vast countryside which
lay before us. The evening sun shone its peaceful radiance across it,
but there brooded over it all the stillness and the silence of universal
death--a death in which we were so soon to join. At the present instant
that one frail sheet of glass, by holding in the extra oxygen which
counteracted the poisoned ether, shut us off from the fate of all our
kind. For a few short hours the knowledge and foresight of one man could
preserve our little oasis of life in the vast desert of death and save us
from participation in the common catastrophe. Then the gas would run
low, we too should lie gasping upon that cherry-coloured boudoir carpet,
and the fate of the human race and of all earthly life would be complete.
For a long time, in a mood which was too solemn for speech, we looked out
at the tragic world.

"There is a house on fire," said Challenger at last, pointing to a column
of smoke which rose above the trees. "There will, I expect, be many
such--possibly whole cities in flames--when we consider how many folk may
have dropped with lights in their hands. The fact of combustion is in
itself enough to show that the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere is
normal and that it is the ether which is at fault. Ah, there you see
another blaze on the top of Crowborough Hill. It is the golf clubhouse,
or I am mistaken. There is the church clock chiming the hour. It would
interest our philosophers to know that man-made mechanisms has survived
the race who made it."

"By George!" cried Lord John, rising excitedly from his chair. "What's
that puff of smoke?